We appreciate your continued support of ECF’s Action for Equality (AfE) programme, committed to raising Gender Equitable Boys in Pune, India. It is due to this consistent support that adolescent boys from 20 communities in Pune currently participate in our AfE programme.

At ECF, between December 2019 - February 2020, we have completed Cycle 25 for two stages of our AfE programme - Foundation Programme and Action Programme. We have also launched Cycle 26 of our Leadership Programme in February, 2020.

During this period:

AfE Foundation Programme (FP): A total of 209 participants graduated out of 290 enrolled from 19 communities.

AfE Action Programme (AP): A total of 148 participants graduated out of 180 enrolled from from 20 communities.

AfE Leadership Programme (LP): Enrollments for Cycle 26 are ongoing and will be shared in the next report.

Some programme highlights from during this period are:

Action Events: Foundation Programme participants conducted public debates on gender roles and the necessity of educating girls, within their respective communities. Alumni from our AfE programme participated in these Action Events as well, in several communities.

Action Programme participants raised awareness on inequalities on the division of household labour. These participants spoke about the differences in hours worked by the average man and average woman in the community, making the point that women typically work more hours in a day when unpaid housework is considered in addition to paid work.

Action Log: Action Logs are visual trackers of the actions taken by participants to facilitate gender equity in their own behaviour, their families and peer groups, and in public, within or outside their communities. These trackers validate the participants’ efforts and motivate them to take actions.

Alumni Engagement: On 2nd February, 2020, we conducted an Alumni Meet - an interaction with some of the graduates of the earlier AfE programme cycles. These alumni spoke about the aspects of AfE that they had enjoyed and the impact of the programme on their behaviours and attitudes. For instance, one alumnus has been successful in preventing a child marriage in his community; another told us how AfE had taught him the imporance of consent and helped him avoid substance abuse.

Alumni have also expressed interest in sustained interaction with ECF after their participation in AfE. We have begun a few initiatives to increase our engagement with alumni - While we conduct informal meetings with our AfE alumni at present, our plans for the next quarter include more formal and intensive interactions.

ECF in the news: We are pleased to share that the following publications recently ran articles that featured the importance of working with boys to transform gender norms and showcased ECF's work:

As of February 2020, with your support, ECF has been able to successfully reach out to and enrol 5,891 boys in the Action for Equality programme. A total of 3,433 adolescent boys have graduated and pledged to ally with women and girls to support gender equality in their communities.

We thank you for your contribution and for supporting our mission to raise every boy in India to be gender equitable.

We appreciate your continued support and contribution to ECF’s Action for Equality (AfE) programme committed to raising Gender Equitable Boys in Pune, India. It is because of this constant support that ECF now engages with 20 communities in Pune.

At ECF, between September 2019 - November 2019, we have launched Cycle 25 of our Foundation programme and Action Programme.

During this period:

AfE Foundation Programme (FP): Our AfE mentors mobilised and enrolled 160 participants across 19 communities in Pune. The final numbers will be shared in the next report.

AfE Action Programme (AP): A total of 159 participants were enrolled for the Action Programme from 20 communities in Pune. The final numbers will be shared in the next report.

Some programme highlights from during this period are: A few important cycle updates from cycle 24 which was ongoing in the month of September and could not be shared in the previous report have been added here.

Action events for cycle 24:A total of 134 Foundation Programme (FP) and Leadership Programme (LP) participants actively took part in the action events. Participants conducted a debate to sensitise people around the topic of girls’ right to education. In their first action event they reached out to 167 community members across 20 communities. The LP participants enacted a street play on the topic of street sexual harassment. In most communities the participants were able to reach out to a large audience by reaching out to a group of religious members during the ganpati festival. These participants reached out to a total of 305 community members across 18 communities. This cycle also had a high participation of girls in focus group discussions and street plays increasing collaborative efforts towards gender equality.

Big Meet Greet (BMG) cycle 24:A total of 87 out of 104 participants attended the BMG for cycle 24. The theme of the event was ‘peer pressure’. We discussed how peer pressure can have positive and negative implications on an individual and how one should assertively say no to the negative forms of peer pressure. The participants related personal experiences and struggles with peer pressure and how some of them were able to stand up to it using skills of assertive communication that they had learnt during the Action for Equality programme sessions.

Focus group discussions with Girls: In this cycle we created a safe space for girls in the community to have conversations around their everyday problems that they face.The girls who participated shared and expressed the impact street sexual harassment, early marriage and forced drop-out has on their lives. This conversation motivated our participants to take action and spread awareness in the community.

Duration for the Leadership Programme: We have successfully completed cycle 24 with the 15 week intervention and we plan to continue with it further.

Addition and removal of communities: In Cycle 25 we will engage with 20 groups in 19 communities in Pune. In this cycle we will not be engaging with Vadgaon Budruk for the Foundation Programme due to low number of participants. On the other hand, we have created two groups in Ambedkar Nagar community due to high community interest and support.

Alumni Meet: A total of 14 AfE alumni attended the alumni meet. They shared that AfE programme played an important role in shaping them to become the individuals that they are today. Skills such as communication, leadership, and mobilisation skills learnt through the programme helped them in their personal and professional spheres. Since their graduation from AfE they have taken several individual actions including creating safe spaces for women at their workplace, taken actions against ragging in their college, spoken up on sex education in college and conducted menstrual hygiene campaigns for girls in the community. We are proud to share that our alumni have continued their journey towards becoming more gender-equitable and are actively contributing to change within the society.

Intensive Team Training (ITT): ECF conducted an Intensive Team Training on the theme of Sexuality and Identity. The objective of the ITT was to build the knowledge and skills of team members on issues and themes in gender and gender-based violence.

This training took place from 14th - 17th October 2019. The sessions focussed on linking the conceptual understanding of sexuality with personal experiences of team members. Through conversations on intersectionality and dispelling myths around sexuality team members were able to reflect on the impact that the social norms have had upon them as individuals.

During the other sessions such as ‘collective wisdom’ and ‘alumni voices’ the team members shared their experiences from the field and achievements from the cycle.

As of November 2019, with your support, ECF has been able to successfully reach out to and enrol 5,601 boys in the Action for Equality programme. A total of 3,224 adolescent boys have graduated and pledged to become allies with women and girls to support gender equality in their communities. We thank you for your contribution and for supporting our mission to raise every boy in India to be gender-equitable.

We appreciate your continued support and contribution to ECF’s Action for Equality (AfE) programme committed to raising Gender Equitable Boys in Pune, India. It is because of this constant support that ECF engages adolescent boys across 20 communities in Pune.

At ECF, between June 2019 - August 2019, we have launched Cycle 24 of our Foundation programme and Leadership Programme (15-week intervention)

During this period:

AfE Foundation Programme (FP): Our AfE mentors have mobilised and enrolled 262 participants across 20 communities in Pune. These participants will graduate in September for the second stage of the AfE programme.

AfE Leadership Programme (LP): A total of 131 participants were enrolled for the leadership programme from 18 communities in Pune. They will graduate as leaders in the month of September.

Some programme highlights during this period were:

Addition and removal of communities:In Cycle 24 we have successfully engaged with 20 communities in Pune. We feel happy to announce that we have recently partnered with Ummeed. With their help we have launched our intervention in a new community called Vadgaon Budruk in Pune.We have discontinued our intervention in Bibwewadi community from this cycle as the number of participants has constantly been declining in this community.

Duration for the Leadership Programme:In the last quarter we had noted a significant decline in the attendance of participants in the Leadership Programme. Hence we held consultation meetings with the participants and the alumni to understand the reasons for this. It was noted that the participants dropped out because of exams and festivals. Some participants also found the sessions to be content heavy and the 30-week engagement to be tedious. Therefore, considering the feedback we decided to decrease the duration of the intervention to 15 weeks. We also plan to review the curriculum to ensure that the modules are accessible.

As part of the team development, we have been conducting regular mentor training for mentors every week. We will conduct our intensive team training for all staff in the next quarter where we will invite an external resource person to deliver sessions on various topics related to Gender.

Focus group discussions (FGD) with girls: We have been trying various strategies to include the voices of girls in our programmes and to normalise interactions between girls and boys. During this cycle we invited adolescent girls to FGDs with our participants to discuss gender-related issues faced by women and girls in the community. Many girls talked about the negative effects of street sexual harassment on their lives and boys were able to hear first hand how girls get pulled out of school as their parents fear for their safety. This experience reinforced our participant’s zeal to take action against gender-based violence.

Action Events:From this cycle our Leadership Programme participants will conduct 4 action events in their respective communities. The Leadership Programme participants have decided to perform street plays on the issue of ‘Street Sexual Harassment’. The action event is ongoing in all the 18 communities. Our Foundation programme action events will begin in the month of September. The topic decided by our participants is gender-based discrimination. We will provide an update on this in the next report.

Big, Meet and Greet (BMG) event: We will be hosting our BMG for Cycle 24 in September, at the end of the Leadership Programme. From this cycle on we have decided to discontinue BMG events for the Foundation and Action Programmes.

As of August 2019, with your support, ECF has been able to successfully reach out to and enrol 5339 boys to Action for Equality programme. A total of 3037 adolescent boys have graduated and pledged to become allies with women to support gender-equality in their communities. These numbers will be updated in the month of September after the completion of Cycle 24.

We thank you for your contribution and supporting our mission, to raise every boy in India to be Gender Equitable.

Thank you for your continued support and contribution to ECF’s Action for Equality (AfE) programme committed to raise Gender Equitable Boys in Pune, India. It is because of the constant support that now ECF engages with 20 communities in Pune.

At ECF, between March 2019 - May 2019, we have completed cycle 23 of AfE Action Programme (AP) and AfE Leadership Programme (LP).

During this period:

AfE Action Programme (AP): The second stage of our AfE programme, AfE Action Programme (15 weeks intervention) has been completed.188 boys enrolled and 138 graduated from the programme in 20 communities around Pune.

AfE Leadership Programme (LP): Cycle 23 of AfE Leadership Programme (LP) has also been completed (30 week intervention). Out of the 172 boys who enrolled in the programme, 94 graduated in 18 communities around Pune.

Few of the key programme highlights during this period were:

1)Action Events: The Action event is an opportunity for boys to showcase what they have learnt in front a public audience.

The participants in the Action Programme mapped all the tasks that the male members and female members in the household undertake in a 24 hour timeframe and demonstrated how women bear the disproportionate responsibility of household chores.

In the Leadership Programme, the participants focused on challenging street sexual harassment in their communities. They undertook a community mapping exercise to map 'unsafe' areas within the community and had one on one conversations with women about why they feel unsafe in these spaces. The boys created wall paintings along with the women, they pasted charts on the walls and conducted a ‘Chalk the Walk’ campaign where they chalked messages against street sexual harassment on public walkways.

2) Engaging with the new communities: We continued our engagement with two new communities during cycle 23. These communities are Jai Bhawani Nagar and Laxminagar.

3) Big Meet and Greet (BMG) Events:

The objectives of the BMG event are

To facilitate networking amongst programme graduates from different communities and to help the boys collectively brainstorm on social issues such as harassment and unequal division of work.

To engage boys in discussions and activities so that they can critically reflect on how they can contribute to creating safe spaces for women within schools and communities.

To motivate boys to continue participating in Action for Equality program

The AP-BMG event was held on the 5th May 2019. 82 boys participated in this event. The topic of discussion during this event was ‘Let's create safe spaces,’ and the boys were encouraged to suggest actions which would help combat unsafe spaces.

The LP-BMG event was held on the 12th May 2019. 63 boys participated in this event. Our leadership participants shared multiple ideas on the topic ‘It’s not okay to harass girls within school premises’ and on the need to make sure that they have access to safe spaces. They also discussed how they could contribute to creating safe spaces for women.

4)Intensive Team Training (ITT)

ECF conducts an Intensive Team Training workshop with all the members of the team at the end of every 15 week cycle. The objective of the ITT is to build knowledge and skills within the team on issues and themes in gender and gender-based violence.

This training workshop took place from the 13th - 16th May 2019. The theme for training was ‘Men and Masculinities’. The sessions included discussions on topics such as ‘Gender in my life’ and ‘Power walk’, through which team members were able to reflect the impact that the social norms have had upon them as individuals.

Other activities included “Looking Back and Look Forward” through which the team reflected upon its achievements from the previous year and identified major milestones for the next year.

ECF hosted Mr. Satish Kumar Singh from CHSJ for the three-day training. He is a leading expert on gender and masculinities in India and has been working on this issue for over 30 years.

All the members attended the training workshop to gain insights on the topic, question the form of masculinity within themselves and work collectively towards changing the same in a positive manner.

5) Longitudinal Study

ECF's Research Development and Evaluation team launched a research study in 2018 to understand the sustainability of the outcome beyond the end of the programme. The first stage of the study demonstrated that the three stage programme serves to shift participants attitudes on gender further along the gender equality spectrum.

The study also compared a sample of participants who had dropped after the first stage of the programme to a sample of participants who completed all three stages. The participants who completed all the three stage demonstrated more equitable gender attitudes.

As of May 2019, together with your support, ECF has been able to successfully reach out and enroll 5339 boys to Action for Equality programme. A total of 3037 adolescent boys have graduated and pledged to become allies with women to support gender equality in the communities.

We thank you for your contribution and supporting our mission, to raise every boy in India to be Gender Equitable.

Thank you for your continued support and contribution to ECF’s Action for Equality (AfE) programme committed to raise Gender Equitable Boys in Pune, India.

At ECF, during the period December 2018 to February 2019, we have completed implementing cycle 22 - Foundation Programme and have started with cycle 23 - Action Programme. Leadership Programme has also been simultaneously being implemented in both the cycles.

During this period:

AfE Foundation Programme (FP): This is the first stage of the AfE programme. ECF team reached out and enrolled 274 new boys across 20 communities in Pune. Out of the 274 boys a total of 185 boys have graduated from the programme.

AfE Action Programme (AP): A total of 188 FP graduates are currently enrolled in the second stage. We have started with the training sessions with the boys in the communities.

Action Programme aims to build on the FP curriculum to enhance participants knowledge and skills enabling them to take actions. Some of the themes covered under AP are: gender norms, gender socialisation, influence of patriarchy, protectionist approach, victim blaming and learning from women's experiences.

AfE Leadership Programme (LP): This is the third and final stage of the AfE Programme. Currently 172 boys from 18 communities are enrolled in LP.

Leadership Programme seeks to achieve change in community gender practice through three approaches: focus on issues relevant to the communities, harness the power of the communities and use tools at hand.

It offers a skill based approach to working with young boys, developing their skills such as public speaking, critical thinking, research, problem solving and campaigning. The approach of leadership development goes beyond a prevention model of working i.e. one that not only aims to support boys to act in gender equitable ways individually, but also collectively as gender advocates in communities who can organise and influence others to act in more gender equitable ways.

Few of the key programme highlights during this period are as below:

Foundation Programme - Action Events:

Action events mark the completion of the AfE programmes. Hence, action events were conducted by the participants across 20 communities to mark the completion of cycle 22 Foundation Programme.

Methods such as poster presentations in the busy lanes of the communities, discussions and quiz with community members, messages through singing local songs were used by the particpants to conduct the action events.

Big Meet and Greet event (BMG)

A total of 154 graduates out of 185 FP graduates attended the cluster BMG event on January 6th, 2019.

The objective of this BMG event was to facilitate networking amongst programme graduates from different communities. Most importantly, engage boys in discussions, activities and critically reflect on the effects of gender roles and gender norms based on their experience.

Also, to motivate boys to continue participating in Action for Equality programme.

AfE Longitudinal Evaluation Study

Our Research, Development and Evaluation (RDE) team has started with the AfE Programme Longitudinal evaluation study.

The study aims to understand the sustainability of the programme outcomes i.e. attitudes, behaviours, knowledge and skills among participants who graduate from the Action for Equality (AfE) programme and provide recommendations for further development.

As a part of this study, interviews with LP graduates who have completed all the three stages of AfE programme were conducted.

As of February 2019, together with your support, ECF has been able to successfully reach out and enroll 5339 boys to Action for Equality programme. A total of 3037 adolescent boys have graduated and pledged to become allies with women to support gender equality in the communities.

We thank you for your contribution and supporting our mission, to raise every boy in India to be Gender Equitable.

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